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No, Tesla Did Not Predict Faster Than Light Neutrinos

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(Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr)

"All of my investigations seem to point to the conclusion that they are small particles, each carrying so small a charge that we are justified in calling them neutrons. They move with great velocity, exceeding that of light." - Nikola Tesla, July 10, 1932

The Nikola Tesla quote above has been making the rounds since last week's announcement from the OPERA research team that they had detected neutrinos that may have traveled faster than the speed of light. For the most part, this has been going under headers like "Tesla was right!", etc.

However, a quick glance at the source of the quote shows that Tesla was, in fact, completely wrong. See the "they" in that first part of the sentence? In context of the article, that refers to cosmic rays. And cosmic rays are not neutrinos. They're mostly highly charged protons, atomic nuclei, and electrons (and the occasional anti-particle for fun). It also probably goes without saying that cosmic rays do not, in fact, travel faster than the speed of light.

Even if we give Tesla the benefit of the doubt and say that he was talking about neutrinos (the terminology of neutrons/neutrinos wasn't quite set in stone yet in 1932), it's worth noting that Tesla didn't predict that they'd go faster than light. He said that he'd observed them going faster than light. But he never published any of his findings if that's the case, and his statement is therefore impossible to verify.

Look, I hold Nikola Tesla in very high esteem. I wouldn't have written an essay admiring his creative capacity for thought if I didn't. But he was by no means right on everything. Earlier in that same year, 1932, he claimed that he could make electricity travel faster than the speed of light, too. (It can't.)

Moreover, Tesla completely rejected the theory of relativity. He insisted that mass and energy were not equivalent and told the New York Times in 1935 that "Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king..." At this point, though, there had been several observations and experiments confirming relativity's predictions, and subsequent decades have only strengthened it.

It's sometimes tempting to look back on the great minds of the ages with a credulous awe. But it's important to remember that those minds were as human as our own. And nobody on Earth was right about everything. Indeed, many of history's great geniuses were profoundly wrong on a number of matters. Isaac Newton was positively brilliant and in many ways defined modern physics. He was also a fervent alchemist and in addition devoted years to deciphering the Book of Revelations to determine what year the world would end (the year 2060, in case you're wondering.) Johannes Kepler was able to see past the prejudice for circular orbits laid down by Aristotle and recognized that planets moved in elliptical orbits. He also thought that taking baths led to disease and reportedly only took one in his entire life. Even Einstein took decades to accept the conclusion that his own theory of relativity implied an expanding universe, not a steady-state one.

The bottom line is that scientists are human. Their theories and suggestions may be brilliant, but they're not Holy Writ. At the end of the day, either the data supports what they say, or it doesn't.  If neutrinos are found to go faster than the speed of light, then Tesla might indeed look acontextually prescient. But if it doesn't, you can chalk that up with the other theories Tesla had that ended up not being supported by the data (and there were quite a few). He was a brilliant man. But he wasn't a god.

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